I like KDE but I don't use Nepomuk, Kwallet, Kmail. I also don't like the dependency to an SQL server.

Apart from that it's very resource consuming, lot's of users complain about annoying messages popping up.

Imho KDE should have an option to run without an SQL server, even if that implies that some KDE functionality will be missing.

I would like to hear the opinion of others.

Moved to Discussions and Opinions.

I'll remind everyone in advance, since I had to close a similar thread recently, that no matter how strongly opinionated you are on the topic (pro or against, it doesn't matter) you have to abide to the forum rules and the KDE Code of Conduct. Flames and personal attacks will lead to a premature locking.

Let's have a civil discussion.

On the topic at hand: I believe you can turn KDE PIM off, and the same for the semantic desktop. So there's no real need for an extra option.

A little offtopic.

I use korganizer and Kadressbook and both works fine. Kmail is another story. It's buggy and also quite slow. I belive that eventually bugs can be fixed but sometimes i'm wonder if caching thousands of mails in SQL server is really a good decision. Maybe MySQL is not suitable for this task. I really don't know.

Majority of users nowdays don't use PIM software and use webmail, so yes ─ i think that Akonadi should be optional. Not sure about the nepomuk.

KDE can be powerful and lightweight at the same time. Wouldn't it be nice if a netbook user can take KDE without Akonadi & Nepomuk & MySql & Virtuoso. Or a user like me who simply does not want a social desktop can still use KDE. I left KDE and I am suffering every day because KDE used to be simply much better than the rest. Please implement an option to remove the said servers. And no, it is simply not possible to switch off Akonakdi and Nepomuk. For example you can not get correctly sized thumbnails in Konqueror because now there is a dependency that did not exist before Nepomuk was introduced.

How does handling metadata leads to wrongly sized thumbnails? Those look like two completely unrelated issues to me. Do you know how to reproduce the problem?

Having been a long time KDE3 and Trinity user, I stayed away from KDE4 until 4.10.1. I'm pleased with 4.10.1 in many ways, but I'm not using the PIM apps. Other than KMail and a few dozen KAlarm events, I don't use any of the other PIM apps and never have.

I used KMail2 and KAlarm for a couple of weeks. KAlarm behaved very well although KAlarm needed about 30 seconds to start after KDE had loaded (dual core SATA II system). KMail2 has problems and I filed bug reports and posted forum requests for help. I'm certain the bugs will be resolved eventually but until then I'll keep using KMail1.

The akonadi caching backend doubled the size of my home directory. I don't understand why text files need to be duplicated. Drive space might be relatively inexpensive these days, but I have no need to search through my mails other than with the basic search tools provided by KMail. As they all are plain text maildir files, I can grep them any time as well. Likewise with KAlarm data files.

I did not notice any performance hits during my couple of weeks using KMail and KAlarm, but I did not like my files being duplicated in such a manner.

Likewise for nepomuk. I see the potential for a desktop search engine and desktop sharing. I just don't need them. Possibly one day I will but not today. At the moment, because I'm not using the latest PIM apps, I don't have akonadi or nepomuk enabled.

Developers are working hard at making KDE great and usable, but a search of the web and this forum indicate akonadi and nepomuk are the overwhelming highest complaints, even with the recent improvements.

Akonadi and nepomuk have much potential but only for certain types of users. KDE "pillars" or not, they both should be optional, either at run-time or build time. Non enterprise and non power users don't want or need that kind of overhead. I believe this is where most of the uneasiness derives. Such users feel ignored and second class. A lot of people love what KDE has finally matured into, but they still run single personal computers and don't have huge data crunching needs.

Despite all of this great work, I fear akonadi and nepomuk will forever be a wedge in the KDE community and that is sad.

I couldn't agree more with woodsman's post. Very well written.

I looked at the kdepim sources. I'm not a C++ hacker by any means but I see that akonadi is deeply embedded into the code. Adding many ifdef/ifndef statements to exclude akonadi will fall far short of being able to disable akonadi at build time.

I wonder whether a System Settings option is possible to exempt certain apps from akonadi data sharing or to exempt certain types of data sharing? As I mentioned, other than the startup delay with KAlarm, I noticed no performance hits when running akonadi (KDE 4.10.1). I don't think that merely running akonadi need be an issue. Nonetheless, exempting certain apps or certain types of data collection/duplication would seem like a great win-win solution for all.

This is a clear vote for removing software components that a majority of KDE users obviously want to get rid of. How can we continue? Is anybody interested in cutting the dependencies from KWrite/Kate? Would KDE accept a patch that removes the dependency for these programs? How about producing a lite version of kdelibs which does not depend on Akonadi and Nepomuk?

In many applications, the dependence on Nepomuk is entirely optional - and I am fairly sure KWrite/Kate do not have any Nepomuk or Akonadi related components.

However, the problem is that kdepimlibs has a hard dependency upon Akonadi, and kdepimlibs is used by enough areas in KDE to effectively be considered a hard dependency of KDE itself. As Akonadi uses Nepomuk, the same then becomes true of Nepomuk itself.

As a result the optional "Nepomuk" components become in effect mandatory as well (although like Akonadi, you do not need to have it enabled or running).

Would KDE accept a patch that removes the dependency for these programs? How about producing a lite version of kdelibs which does not depend on Akonadi and Nepomuk?

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308131
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317709

Akregator's Akonadi-free days are numbered:

https://techbase.kde.org/Projects/PIM/A ... gator_Port
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317574

Would seem the KDE devs are not going to help. Perhaps other skilled hackers will attempt an Akonadi-free PIM suite. We can hope. Possibly use the 4.4.11.1 sources and backporting a few patches would suffice as a start.

Perhaps the razor-qt folks should look into porting the last known Akonadi-free components of the KDE PIM suite.

Too bad this has to play out this way. I like KMail, KAlarm, and Akregator. I need nor want Akonadi because I'm not the type of user who needs or wants correlation of such data. Such users do not have a voice in this discussion.

woodsman wrote:https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308131
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317709

Both closed as invalid exactly because adding this new option would outweigh the benefit (and has anyone thought about maintenance?). The decision of moving to this PIM framework was deliberate. Of course, this being Free Software, no one is locked in to that.

Akregator's Akonadi-free days are numbered:

To be honest, it was meant to migrate from the start, but there wasn't enough manpower to finish the port.

Would seem the KDE devs are not going to help. Perhaps other skilled hackers will attempt an Akonadi-free PIM suite.

There are plenty of alternatives, including Qt-based ones, such as Trojita. Thus the picture for people not wanting to use KDEPIM is not as bleak as you paint it to be.

There are plenty of alternatives, including Qt-based ones, such as Trojita.

Trojita does not support POP3.

One of the flaws with the all-or-nothing Akonadi framework is all KDE users store personal data online in the cloud and use multiple devices to access that data. Interesting that devs of other PIM apps do not presume this.

Fascinating that KDE devs recommend using non KDE apps to avoid the dicussion.

Teuniz wrote:<snip> annoying messages popping up..

What messages? Which version of KDE? afaik this has been fixed (if it's what I think it is)

woodsman wrote:<snip>
Fascinating that KDE devs recommend using non KDE apps to avoid the dicussion.

what devs are you refering to, the admins? afaik they don't dev the pim nor the semantic desktop

rwolf wrote:This is a clear vote for removing software components that a majority of KDE users obviously want to get rid of.

"clear vote", a vote total of 12 you consider a proper sampling?

My opnion and I don't 1) dev 2) work for KDE - I don't care, I don't use Akonadi nor Nepomuk and I don't see any repercussions from these technologies being installed. Maybe because I'm running 4.10.x or I have suffient resources (to me the mysqld and Akonadi processes ram usages appears pretty minimal and the cpu usage is non-existant).